‘Wakey wakey, rise and shine’ Scottish Labour slump sees party set to lose all but one Scottish MP to the SNP, all 2017 gains wiped out, the polling is rather uncomfortable reading because it highlights various problems for Labour, however don’t go running to the bookies to put a bet on the SNP retaking Glasgow North East from Paul Sweeney at the next election

Dear All

Polling can sometimes flag up new information or warnings, a new poll is proving uncomfortable reading for Labour leader in Scotland, Richard Leonard, the news is that Scottish Labour is on course to lose all the Westminster seats it gained from the SNP at the last general election.

In Glasgow North East, I helped Labour MP Paul Sweeney get over the line to royally defeat Nicola Sturgeon’s pal, Anne McLaughlin, it was a close fight, but I knew that Paul Sweeney could win it.

242 votes majority was the final deciding factor on who went to Westminster on the night of the count. Lord Ashcroft had put Labour’s chances at 2% of achieving a win so taking that seat was a special moment because a dedicated few had battle the might of the SNP machine. The team was a mixture of personalities and different campaigning styles but somehow it managed to work.

The Labour Party is going through a bad period; a survey shows plummeting support for Jeremy Corbyn, it could be said that there has been problems, the party split between the supporters of Corbyn and those of ‘progress’ the right wing of the Labour Party. Progress is sitting biding its time, what are they waiting for; well simply put ‘electoral failure’ by the UK Labour leader.

In Scotland, polling says the SNP are sitting on 42 per cent, which according to the polling this also means they would get back the eight seats it lost to the Scottish Conservatives in June 2017, with the Tories polling at 24 per cent of the vote. I helped three people become MPs in 2017, two Conservatives and one Labour since at that point I wasn’t in a political party and was therefore a ‘free agent’. I enjoyed working for both Labour in Glasgow North East and the Conservatives in Ayr and Newton Mearns.

One of my best days campaigning was going around the wee small villages in Ayrshire promoting Bill Grant, the Conservative, an ex fireman. 

Nice weather, nice people and the local Conservatives were pleased I had travelled all the way from Glasgow to pitch in for them. The worst part of my experience was campaigning for Pollok CLP, treated like shit, ignored and made to feel unwelcome, assisting in a campaign which was quite frankly a joke, run badly by people who didn’t achieve much during the short campaign, 888 votes for 6 weeks work.  

Prior to the six weeks the Pollok CLP was doing nothing for months on end.

Recently, I was asked to put my thoughts together about Pollok CLP for someone, so I scribbled down what I thought should be the objective of the CLP if there was to be a snap election or election in 2022. The feedback was the person agreed with me because I highlighted several issues beyond the current ‘race row’ Westminster selection contest.

Professor Sir John Curtice who is always worth listening too said the results suggested Labour’s support “is going backwards”, well that about sums things up, on  the wider scale, it mirrors what I highlighted about what needed to be addressed at Pollok CLP……. leadership.

The Labour Party in Scotland isn’t doing much, there isn’t a person driving forward an agenda, it seems everything is haphazard and too short term to have any lasting and meaningful impact.

If you had read my back blog posts, you will notice that I was saying that the SNP could hold on as the largest party, but even with support from the Scottish Greens, they might not make a majority. What the poll says that the SNP is on course to to get an unprecedented fourth consecutive Holyrood election win. This is why I keep going on about why the 2021 Holyrood is the most important election since Holyrood opened in 1999.

What that election is about is denying the SNP an overall majority even with Scottish Greens support!

At present the Scottish Labour Party is the third party in Holyrood, so there is a huge amount of work to do to get even a sniff at the Office of First Minister but the handicap is who is going to do the ground work in the communities to go out and get the votes. And also when you see some of the people in charge, you ask yourself who is going to go out and work for them.

Which is why the vast majority of the membership have spoken with total inactivity, being a member and being an activist is two entirely different things, in the eyes of the Labour Party there appears to be no difference.

Jeremy Corbyn’s popularity among voters seems to have slumped a bit, with just 28 per cent of Scots now feeling favourably towards him. Here is a clear example of why the slump happened:

https://news.sky.com/story/naz-shah-labour-mp-once-caught-up-in-anti-semitism-row-given-equalities-brief-11432643

How do you think this sits with potential voters?

Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard is struggling to make a name for himself; he is polling with just nine per cent of people viewing him favourably, and the headache of 26 per cent viewing him unfavourably. Not the polling a person wants to see if they have ambition to be First Minister.  

Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson on the other hand is the most popular politician among voters at present, that is good news for the Scottish Conservatives, however, the Conservatives need to have a better ground operation to compete with the SNP, plus they need a ‘unique message’ to sell basically something which they can get Westminster to do that the SNP cannot. Scottish Conservatives need to give Scots something which would get them mass support.

Labour campaigns spokesman Neil Findlay said:

“The emerging dividing line in Scotland is between Labour’s plan to invest and build an economy that works for the many, not the few, or further austerity with the SNP and the Tories.”

Does anyone at the Labour HQ realise that parroting ‘for the many, not the few’ tagged into every spokesperson responses is just plain annoying, and makes them sound like a mindless drone.

A Conservative spokesman said:

“This very much reinforces Labour’s position as political non-entities in Scotland, and proves Ruth Davidson is the only alternative first minister to Nicola Sturgeon.”

  

Finally, although all political parties look at the polling religiously, they are always on the look out for trends, if the future polling continues to look bad for Scottish Labour, they will by circumstance be forced to change not just policies, but also practices and people, candidates and staff. I said yesterday that Labour could get back five seats in Glasgow, I still stand by that observation however they will have to be creative and work for them, politics in Scotland is still rather fluid.

Yours sincerely

George Laird

The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University